


branches on a tree

by impossibletruths



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Family, Fillorian Marriage Customs Are Weird, Friendship/Love, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, The Author Has Taken A Loose Approach To Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 02:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19308424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: Fen is married to Eliot. Quentin is also––sort of, kind of, in-an-alternate-timeline-that-may-or-may-not-have-happened way––married to Eliot. As far as Fillorian conversation starters go, it’s not the weirdest.written for queliot week 2019





	branches on a tree

**Author's Note:**

> for queliot week day 5 (polyamory). set vaguely after 3.05; timelines are a little wonky because I do what I want.

There’s a point, sometime after the visit to the City of the Large Apple and before the overwhelming heartbreak, that Eliot sits her down in a corner of the cozy cottage they live in when they don’t live in Fillory––though, as someone who grew up in a real cottage she’s not entirely sure the term applies here––and tells her in very short, very vague terms, about a lifetime lived far removed from this one.

He keeps the details sparing. Nonexistent, really. But the High King has always had a tendency towards garrulousness when it comes to things that don’t matter and remained close-lipped about things that do, so his resounding silence suggests how precious these fragments of memory are to him.

“I mean,” he finishes, about as anxious as she has ever seen him, which still isn’t  _much_ , but sharing quarters with someone does provide a modicum of awareness of one’s habits and moods, even if Eliot tends to keep her at arm’s length. “I hardly remember, so I don’t even know if it counts, but being my wife you should probably know that Quentin and I were. Married.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”

He peers at her. It’s late, and the cottage is amber-warm with a fiery glow that makes her homesick, a little. “That’s it? Okay?”

It’s curious, the things that make him worry for her. Sweet, in his distant, recalcitrant way. She knows full well theirs is a marriage of politics and debts owed, but she does love him in a way she would be hard-pressed to put words to. Him, and Fray, and their little––as he likes to put it––fucked-up family.

Which has, apparently, grown overnight. She’s dealt with worse.

This is nothing compared to the fucking fairies.

“Eliot,” she says, kindly. “You were going to marry Idri. How is this any different?”

“Idri was––” He cuts himself short as she watches him, and oh, yes, she understands. Does he? It’s hard to tell with Eliot. He buries his heart so deep, sometimes she’s not sure even he sees it.

He goes searching for a different answer, and she lets him think on it.

“Quentin and I are friends,” he decides. “Just friends. He won’t–– I mean, it’s not like he’s joining our marriage.”

It’s funny that he thinks he has any sort of control over this sort of magic. Or, it might be, if he weren’t so often and obviously made miserable by it.

At least, she thinks with some semblance of optimism, the fidelity clause was wiped away by Ember’s latest and last temper tantrum. It’s been nice to be able to–– well. Explore a little.

Eliot leans forward, intent. The firelight paints him all in gold. “We’ve been royally––pun intended––fucked by this before. I thought you deserved to know, in case it backfires. Again. Somehow.” He looks, for the first time, truly concerned. “I... would feel bad if this hurt you. Or Fray.”

He really is very sweet. She squeezes his hand.

“Thank you,” she tells him, meaning both for telling her and for worrying. He sighs, short and sharp. He looks so very old as he does, like he carries those years somewhere tucked away inside him.

A younger Eliot wouldn’t have brought this up, she thinks, and she doesn’t entirely know how she feels about that. Warm, maybe. Relieved to see him more settled in his own skin. They've been through–– well. A lot. Not all growing up should be painful.

Though he is very clearly still her Eliot, because he follows that up with: “If you could maybe not mention this to anyone?”

“I won’t,” she promises. Because she loves him in her own strange way, and because this is precious to him, and because it’s nice, sometimes, to have something private as husband and wife.

And... husband.

So, probably she should talk to King Quentin.

He turns out to be a surprisingly hard man to find. None of the Children of Earth have what she would term normal (or, say, healthy) sleeping habits, and from the few periods that they’ve overlapped at Whitespire, Fen knows King Quentin is the worst of them all, except perhaps Eliot. But Eliot’s habits and late-night wanderings she knows, can predict.

Quentin is... a little more of a mystery.

She makes her way through the cottage––truly, who thought up the name; it is enormous––twice without any sign of him. Perhaps he has gone to bed, then. Or left, off on the next step of this quest to return magic to the worlds, and solve all the problem they face without it at their beck and call.

She stops in, briefly, to check in on Fray, sleeping tucked in on her side in one of the bedrooms Todd assured them was empty. It’s like a ruin, their cottage, all space and not enough souls to fill it, each of them a tiny pinprick among the emptiness.

She lingers over Fray a long minute, awash with the same mix of love and fear and anger and hope she feels every time she looks on their daughter, grown up before her time. She reaches for the love, for the hope. If she holds tight enough, she can make it real. She will make it real. Not all magic is gone from the world; she still has this, the love and grief of a mother.

On her way back down the hall, she runs into Quentin exiting another room.

“Fen,” he says, surprised, a little pink in the cheeks. He fixes his shirt, hands fluttering around him. “What are you doing up? It’s late.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Quentin––with whom she has shared perhaps a single conversation, and even then it was within a group––looks rightfully surprised, and then wary.

“Um. Right now? About what?”

“Eliot said you got married.”

It is... hardly the most eloquent or mindful way to bring up the subject, but she is a knifemaker’s daughter first and a royal consort second, and sometimes the direct strike hits cleanest. That, and some habits are hard to unlearn.

Quentin’s face does something frail and trembling, and then bitter, and then settles on mounting surprise. He is not at all like Eliot; he is all noise, emotion, honesty. It comes spilling out of him.

Fen doesn’t wonder that Eliot loves him so much.

“It’s not–– It was another–– I mean, I’m not sure it even–– He  _told_  you?”

Fen asks, kindly, “Would you like to sit down?”

He nods once, and so they sit in the hallway just outside Fray’s borrowed bedroom. The hall is all blue and black, and Quentin blends into it perfectly. He’s still wearing something Fillorian, as out of place here in their Earth cottage as his Earth clothes are in Whitespire. Always sticking out, it seems; a sore thumb compared to Eliot’s immediate adoption of local finery. What a strange, perfectly balanced pair they make.

“He told me as his wife,” Fen says, not quite defensive but not  _not_  defensive either. It’s still her marriage, mostly. Sort of. “I promised not to share.”

“Oh.”

Perhaps he needs more explanation. “Fillorian marriage customs––”

“Are weird, I know. I was married.” 

She nods. “To Eliot.”

“I–– Yeah. And a, a woman. It’s sort of complicated.” He hesitates. “Um, sorry, Fen, what are you–– I mean, I like you and all, but I’m not––”

Fen is rather sure he likes her the way she likes him; as a fellow body caught in Eliot’s orbit, a kind enough acquaintance with little in common and less time to discover what that might be.

“I’m not asking you to marry me,” she assures him. His shoulders slump.

“Good.” He winces. “Sorry, no, that came out wrong.”

She laughs, careful to keep quiet lest she wake someone. “I know. It’s alright. I don’t want to marry you either.”

“I think I’m kind of hurt? But, uh. Thanks.” He sighs, shoulders rising high and slumping, and rubs his forehead, then scrapes his hair up in his fingers and ties it in a messy bun behind his head. “I still don’t really get this whole Fillorian marriage thing.”

“It’s a lot,” she agrees, because she’s been raised to it and still finds it changing around her.

Though, the meddling gods had plenty to do with that.

"You said you... had a wife,” she probes, curious. “What was she like?”

Quentin tilts his head back against the wall. “I don’t remember a lot of it,” he admits, quiet, delicate. “Living in Fillory, I mean. It’s like... like when you wake up, after a dream. I’ve got... sensations. Images. A few clear moments. She was... beautiful. Kind. Smart, smarter than me. So fierce, when she was in a mood. We had a son.” He hesitates. “She died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It–– Yeah. But I was lucky to know her, y’know?”

Fen thinks of Fray. “I know.”

“I just–– We had a family.” He says it with such awe, such wonder. Fen thinks of Fray, sleeping in the room at her back, and she understands exactly what that’s like, and knows she’s right to speak to him about this.

She reaches a hand toward him, palm up in offering.

“I know I’m not your wife,” she says, carefully, as diplomatic as she can manage. “And I don’t mean to be. I’m sorry you lost her. But I am Eliot’s wife, and–– You are welcome, to our family. I know that isn’t the same, but it’s–– I wanted to make sure you knew. That you’re welcome here.”

Quentin looks at her hand for a moment, and then looks at her.

“He talked about you a lot,” he says. “Especially in the early days. He was–– sorry, I think. About you, and, um, your daughter.”

“Fray,” she supplies. Quentin nods, mouth a ragged line. She smiles at him. “I know.” 

She’s well aware of how sorry Eliot is, and how deeply he buries it. That sweet, straining heart of his, under layers and layers of stone and earth, like it won’t hurt him if he can tuck it away deep enough.

Quentin hesitates. He touches her hand briefly, then pulls away, and her fingers curl around nothing. She watches him wrestle with himself, silent.

“But I’m not a part of that. I appreciate it, Fen, really, but he’s not–– That was a different life. Literally.”

His face folds up, twisted and aching, all that emotion spilling out. Fen sighs.

“Eliot and I,” she says carefully, “were intended for each other. Neither one of us got much of a say in that.”

Quentin winces, guilty. He had made the deal, she knows. More convoluted Fillorian time magic, ruining things before they come to pass. And making things beautiful too. She might have had all ten toes and fewer nightmares, but she would never have seen other worlds, never would have helped save them. There’s something to be said for the balance of it all. She sets her empty hand on his knee, the lightest touch, the frailest filament of a connection.

“We will never be traditional husband and wife. But I still love him, and he still loves me. Family doesn’t fit rules. It’s––” and she smiles, borrowing Eliot’s words–– “fucked up.”

Quentin huffs a laugh. “And you want to add one more guy you barely know to the list?”

“If Eliot has room for you in his heart, I can make space,” she promises. “Also, Fillorian marriage customs are... a little strange, about things like that. I don’t know how much choice we get.”

“Right,” says Quentin, a little bitter and a little amused, like he can see the easy out she has left for him and hasn’t decided how he feels about it.

“And, anyway,” she adds hastily. “It’s not a list. It’s like... boughs of a tree. Growing in their own way, and connected at the root.”

“That’s... a very nice way to put it, Fen.”

It is. She’s rather proud of herself for that one. Perfectly diplomatic. “Thank you.”

They both sit there for a minute, growing awkward. Quentin twitches, and Fen pulls her hand away, pushing herself to her feet. Quentin, with more than a little relief, does the same.

“Well, um,” says Quentin. “Goodnight, I guess.”

“Goodnight,” Fen replies, and has half turned to leave before Quentin’s voice jumps through the air again.

“You know,” he starts, too loud in the dark, and stops himself. Fen faces him, finds him all furrows. His voice lowers. “You know Eliot and I are just–– We’re just friends, right? Everything that happened, it’s not–– It hasn’t changed anything here, not really. Just some, um, technical details. You don’t have to change things up on my account.”

“Quentin,” she says, not unkindly. They really are a match made by the gods. Perfectly in love, perfectly stubborn. “Eliot and I are friends. Whatever you are, it’s more than that.”

And she smiles gently at him, all blue shadows in the dark of the hallway, and finds her own room for the evening, one more pinprick person, bough of a tree stretching through this big, empty house.


End file.
